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Rappan Athuk The Dungeon of Graves #1
The Upper Levels
The first in the "R" series of D20 System dungeon modules by Necromancer Games, Rappan Athuk -- The Dungeon of Graves: The Upper Levels is the grand-daddy of all dungeon crawls This dungeon of caverns, passages, traps and hidden chambers defies even the most experienced adventurer to travel its halls. This module features six levels of this evil, multilevel dungeon, including monsters your characters have never imagined in their worst nightmares. Rappan Athuk awaits
- GenresRole Playing GamesGaming
48 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2000
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 8, 2021
Say it's the year 2000. You survived the non-pocalypse, you've been working on your campaign world for a couple of years now, and you're pretty pleased with how things are progressing. You've spent hours painstakingly crafting the cities and towns, the major and minor NPCs, the dungeons and the dragons (if you will). Player complaints are mild to non-existent, because you aspire to be loved, not feared, as a Dungeon Master. You understand role-playing games are shared experiences between game master and players, where everyone gets an opportunity to shine, 'fairness' is the fulcrum upon which your sessions balance, and death only occurs in the worst-case scenarios. Your rallying cry is, "It's role-playing, not roll-playing!", and the game has evolved to match this sentiment, especially with the recent release of the Third Edition by Wizards of the Coast.
Necromancer Games would like a word with you, and the hand they use to smack you upside the head and get your attention is this 48-page introductory nightmare. Like Boots of Groin-Kicking +5, Rappan Athuk is primed to leave your players a simpering, quivering mass of urine-soaked and bunched panties on your basement floor. Bill Webb started building this testament to testicular torsion in 1977, meaning it had been festering for twenty-three years before Necromancer Games unleashed it on the world for the first time. In the intervening years, it's been released and re-released several more times, playtested and demonstrated on countless GenCon attendees from 2001 to 2005, and each time it's larger, nastier, and deadlier than the last, including 2012's enormous dual-hardcover releases that each span some 500-600 pages in total for both the Pathfinder system in particular, or the Swords & Wizards rules-agnostic version, culminating in a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised $165,000 to bring forth a 5th Edition conversion this year.
Today though, I'm just looking at part one of the original Y2K release: The Upper Levels. So light your torches, gird your loins, and make sure you brought your lucky 20-sider. This is Rappan Athuk--don't go in The Well, and that's the last warning you're going to receive.
What The Hell's Rapan Athuk?
Rappan Athuk is what you get when you combine The Tomb of Horrors with The Temple of Elemental Evil and purposely leave out all the fucks a recipe like that calls for just to see what happens. Like The Ruins of Undermoutain or Night Below, Rappan Athuk isn't a single adventure meant to be played and beaten in a couple of sessions, but a full-fledged campaign setting meant to thrust a low-level party directly into the fire, then hammer them mercilessly until they either emerge as battle-hardened, scar-encrusted, high-level veterans, or (as is more likely) pasty red blobs of things that once looked like PCs.
Necromancer Games' slogan at the time was, "Third Edition rules, First Edition feel", and reading Rappan Athuk it's easy to see they weren't kidding. I'll let the introduction speak for itself:
First Edition D&D modules were rife with this sort of thing. It's part of what made them so awesome. Gary Gygax might have gone into great detail as to the wheres and wherefores surrounding Acererak's domicile in The Tomb of Horrors, but he was just at home throwing everything into the cauldron and stirring it around to see what foamed out, as anyone who's experienced The Keep on the Borderlands can attest. The sense is that while modern-day role-players need to know these things before they march their characters in to save the day, and Game Masters take pains to dot all those I's and cross all those T's, there's also something to be said for the "I want to put a Catoblepas in this hallway because shut up, that's why!" philosophy of design.
1E modules have a certain reputation of being player mincers, but that's because they were often written by veteran DMs to unleash of veteran players. D&D as a ruleset in general presumed a level of intelligence and wisdom among its players, and designers wrote to that mentality, no matter what level range they were covering with their adventure. They included instant-death traps, monsters which outclassed parties, and situations where random chance alone dictated success or failure. Like real life, they could be profoundly unfair...and if there's any description for Rappan Athuk, it should include both those words.
What Can I Expect To Find In Rappan Athuk?
Pain. Misery. Failed saving throws. Skeletons. A Demon Prince. You know, the usual.
Why On Earth Would I Run/Play This?
Because you're a masochistic head case? Because you hate your players? Because you hate your GM? I don't know--you do you, man. I'm just here to tell you about the product.
Quit Bragging And Get To The Review, Screen Monkey!
Touchy ain't we? Yeesh.
Format-wise, Rappan Athuk: The Upper Levels so successfully apes 1E genre conventions that it's scary. Everything from the cartography and the "who gives a crap?" dungeon design philosophy down to the twenty-eight different rumors available to inquisitive sorts who like to ask questions before they commit to their delving screams "First Edition feel". In this, Necromancer Games knocks it out of the park.
This particular book details only the ground level and the first four floors of the dungeon, but trust me when I say that's more than enough. While the design usually sticks to the conventions of "the lower the level, the deadlier the foes", Rappan Athuk includes a least one encounter on every floor, level, and sub-floor that will beat the fear of their respective deities into the survivors. Third Edition wasn't averse to this kind of thing, as anyone who explored The Forge of Fury and ran across the Roper can attest, but that was one encounter with a static enemy. Rappan Athuk, in keeping with its Tomb of Horrors inspiration, will completely annihilate the party with its very first trap if the explorers haven't found a necessary item before they seek entry into the initial dungeon level.
Subsequent floors include similar challenges, including a brutal, virtually-unkillable 90 hit point monstrosity that wanders the first level which will make your players hate you for weeks after they encounter it, and a CR 13(!) undead badass guarded by a horde of iron golems that will make mincemeat out of all but the highest-level, most-well-prepared party. This, by the way, is the encounter depicted on the cover. Every floor includes at least one guardian monster that serves as the master or mistress of the immediate area. This includes the "bonus scenario" which was downloadable from the Necromancer Games website back in the day providing you were sufficient enough a grognard to A) own a copy of TSR's D3: Vault of the Drow and B) remember the name "Belgos" to access it. While this download is no longer available since the website is as defunct as your party's soon to be (Zing!), it's shocking nobody at Wizards of the Coast issued a Cease and Desist order against this supplement. It's a bald-faced copy/paste rip-off of one encounter in particular from that classic 1E adventure. Come on, guys--homage is one thing, but infringement sucks Tarrasque dung.
Speaking of supplements, there was a second available from the website as well which added the wilderness areas around Rappan Athuk into the product. While this isn't essential to enjoy the module, it gives the DM something to do while the PCs travel to their destination. This is no weaksauce entry either--the Wilderness area update is a twenty-page packet of text and maps, adding basically another 33% to the product's size for no money at all. Hard to argue with that, although again, the website's defunct so the only way to get it today is to buy one of the later releases which included it in the printed version.
So Should I Play This, Or What?
As someone with thirty-some years of RPG experience under my Belt of Dong Engorgement (ladies!), I have to say Rappan Athuk is a solid product which is fun to read, but not very fun to play unless you're using pre-gen characters and/or your group isn't willing to hold some of the vicious nonsense cooked up by Webb and Peterson against you.
If you spring this on unprepared players, you're a complete bastard. Tomb of Horrors can get away with this stuff because it's meant for high-level parties with considerable in-game resources, but Rappan Athuk's upper levels are meant for a party of a half-dozen 3rd-5th level characters. Make sure your players are ready and truly understand what they're getting into before you start slinging dice and you'll have a great time. Trick your players into walking into this character blender and you'll deserve the torches and pitchforks they apply to your sensitive bits.
Naturally if you and your group are game to enter this particular edition of Rappan Athuk, you'll probably want to add R2: The Middle Levels and R3: The Lower Levels to your library (or one of the newer versions for Pathfinder or 5E). It's totally fair to buy this installment first and read through it to get an idea of just how down for a game of "hide the razor dildo in your prostate" your players will be. You'll know by page three -- if they ain't biting, then don't be casting.
On the other hand, there's much to be said for owning some version of this just because of how gawddamn infamous the place is. The fact Webb and cohorts have continued updating, expanding, and re-working this abomination for forty years gives it the sort of pedigree you just don't find except from the most iconic RPG products. There's a reason Wizards publishes new versions of adventures like Ravenloft and compilations like Tales From the Yawning Portal. I've no compunction declaring Rappan Athuk worthy of inclusion with such august company. Just take that recommendation with the grains of salt detailed above, and you'll be fine.
Four and a half magically-animated dung monsters out of five!
Necromancer Games would like a word with you, and the hand they use to smack you upside the head and get your attention is this 48-page introductory nightmare. Like Boots of Groin-Kicking +5, Rappan Athuk is primed to leave your players a simpering, quivering mass of urine-soaked and bunched panties on your basement floor. Bill Webb started building this testament to testicular torsion in 1977, meaning it had been festering for twenty-three years before Necromancer Games unleashed it on the world for the first time. In the intervening years, it's been released and re-released several more times, playtested and demonstrated on countless GenCon attendees from 2001 to 2005, and each time it's larger, nastier, and deadlier than the last, including 2012's enormous dual-hardcover releases that each span some 500-600 pages in total for both the Pathfinder system in particular, or the Swords & Wizards rules-agnostic version, culminating in a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised $165,000 to bring forth a 5th Edition conversion this year.
Today though, I'm just looking at part one of the original Y2K release: The Upper Levels. So light your torches, gird your loins, and make sure you brought your lucky 20-sider. This is Rappan Athuk--don't go in The Well, and that's the last warning you're going to receive.
What The Hell's Rapan Athuk?
Rappan Athuk is what you get when you combine The Tomb of Horrors with The Temple of Elemental Evil and purposely leave out all the fucks a recipe like that calls for just to see what happens. Like The Ruins of Undermoutain or Night Below, Rappan Athuk isn't a single adventure meant to be played and beaten in a couple of sessions, but a full-fledged campaign setting meant to thrust a low-level party directly into the fire, then hammer them mercilessly until they either emerge as battle-hardened, scar-encrusted, high-level veterans, or (as is more likely) pasty red blobs of things that once looked like PCs.
Necromancer Games' slogan at the time was, "Third Edition rules, First Edition feel", and reading Rappan Athuk it's easy to see they weren't kidding. I'll let the introduction speak for itself:
Once upon a time, there was an idea--an idea formulated by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974 and published in a little paperback book called Underworld Adventures. The idea was simple: it's a lot of fun to go into a dungeon and kill evil monsters. Why is the dungeon there? No one knows. Why do the monsters usually fight rather than talk? We aren't really sure. Whey are there 16 trolls in a cave with a jug of alchemy? No one cares. What do all the monsters eat? We don't know that either (although "adventurer" probably tops the menu). And we don't have to know these things. This isn't an ecology experiment; it's a dungeon--the quintessential setting for pure sword-and-sorcery adventuring!
First Edition D&D modules were rife with this sort of thing. It's part of what made them so awesome. Gary Gygax might have gone into great detail as to the wheres and wherefores surrounding Acererak's domicile in The Tomb of Horrors, but he was just at home throwing everything into the cauldron and stirring it around to see what foamed out, as anyone who's experienced The Keep on the Borderlands can attest. The sense is that while modern-day role-players need to know these things before they march their characters in to save the day, and Game Masters take pains to dot all those I's and cross all those T's, there's also something to be said for the "I want to put a Catoblepas in this hallway because shut up, that's why!" philosophy of design.
1E modules have a certain reputation of being player mincers, but that's because they were often written by veteran DMs to unleash of veteran players. D&D as a ruleset in general presumed a level of intelligence and wisdom among its players, and designers wrote to that mentality, no matter what level range they were covering with their adventure. They included instant-death traps, monsters which outclassed parties, and situations where random chance alone dictated success or failure. Like real life, they could be profoundly unfair...and if there's any description for Rappan Athuk, it should include both those words.
What Can I Expect To Find In Rappan Athuk?
Pain. Misery. Failed saving throws. Skeletons. A Demon Prince. You know, the usual.
Why On Earth Would I Run/Play This?
Because you're a masochistic head case? Because you hate your players? Because you hate your GM? I don't know--you do you, man. I'm just here to tell you about the product.
Quit Bragging And Get To The Review, Screen Monkey!
Touchy ain't we? Yeesh.
Format-wise, Rappan Athuk: The Upper Levels so successfully apes 1E genre conventions that it's scary. Everything from the cartography and the "who gives a crap?" dungeon design philosophy down to the twenty-eight different rumors available to inquisitive sorts who like to ask questions before they commit to their delving screams "First Edition feel". In this, Necromancer Games knocks it out of the park.
This particular book details only the ground level and the first four floors of the dungeon, but trust me when I say that's more than enough. While the design usually sticks to the conventions of "the lower the level, the deadlier the foes", Rappan Athuk includes a least one encounter on every floor, level, and sub-floor that will beat the fear of their respective deities into the survivors. Third Edition wasn't averse to this kind of thing, as anyone who explored The Forge of Fury and ran across the Roper can attest, but that was one encounter with a static enemy. Rappan Athuk, in keeping with its Tomb of Horrors inspiration, will completely annihilate the party with its very first trap if the explorers haven't found a necessary item before they seek entry into the initial dungeon level.
Subsequent floors include similar challenges, including a brutal, virtually-unkillable 90 hit point monstrosity that wanders the first level which will make your players hate you for weeks after they encounter it, and a CR 13(!) undead badass guarded by a horde of iron golems that will make mincemeat out of all but the highest-level, most-well-prepared party. This, by the way, is the encounter depicted on the cover. Every floor includes at least one guardian monster that serves as the master or mistress of the immediate area. This includes the "bonus scenario" which was downloadable from the Necromancer Games website back in the day providing you were sufficient enough a grognard to A) own a copy of TSR's D3: Vault of the Drow and B) remember the name "Belgos" to access it. While this download is no longer available since the website is as defunct as your party's soon to be (Zing!), it's shocking nobody at Wizards of the Coast issued a Cease and Desist order against this supplement. It's a bald-faced copy/paste rip-off of one encounter in particular from that classic 1E adventure. Come on, guys--homage is one thing, but infringement sucks Tarrasque dung.
Speaking of supplements, there was a second available from the website as well which added the wilderness areas around Rappan Athuk into the product. While this isn't essential to enjoy the module, it gives the DM something to do while the PCs travel to their destination. This is no weaksauce entry either--the Wilderness area update is a twenty-page packet of text and maps, adding basically another 33% to the product's size for no money at all. Hard to argue with that, although again, the website's defunct so the only way to get it today is to buy one of the later releases which included it in the printed version.
So Should I Play This, Or What?
As someone with thirty-some years of RPG experience under my Belt of Dong Engorgement (ladies!), I have to say Rappan Athuk is a solid product which is fun to read, but not very fun to play unless you're using pre-gen characters and/or your group isn't willing to hold some of the vicious nonsense cooked up by Webb and Peterson against you.
If you spring this on unprepared players, you're a complete bastard. Tomb of Horrors can get away with this stuff because it's meant for high-level parties with considerable in-game resources, but Rappan Athuk's upper levels are meant for a party of a half-dozen 3rd-5th level characters. Make sure your players are ready and truly understand what they're getting into before you start slinging dice and you'll have a great time. Trick your players into walking into this character blender and you'll deserve the torches and pitchforks they apply to your sensitive bits.
Naturally if you and your group are game to enter this particular edition of Rappan Athuk, you'll probably want to add R2: The Middle Levels and R3: The Lower Levels to your library (or one of the newer versions for Pathfinder or 5E). It's totally fair to buy this installment first and read through it to get an idea of just how down for a game of "hide the razor dildo in your prostate" your players will be. You'll know by page three -- if they ain't biting, then don't be casting.
On the other hand, there's much to be said for owning some version of this just because of how gawddamn infamous the place is. The fact Webb and cohorts have continued updating, expanding, and re-working this abomination for forty years gives it the sort of pedigree you just don't find except from the most iconic RPG products. There's a reason Wizards publishes new versions of adventures like Ravenloft and compilations like Tales From the Yawning Portal. I've no compunction declaring Rappan Athuk worthy of inclusion with such august company. Just take that recommendation with the grains of salt detailed above, and you'll be fine.
Four and a half magically-animated dung monsters out of five!
February 9, 2014
Rappan Athuk is a quintessential megadungeon, lots of ways in, ample ways to get from one level to another, super-secret high-level areas in the middle of otherwise lower level ones, and lots of killer traps and encounters. It is kinda fun to compare this to Caverns of Thracia. Both have 'death cults', but whereas Caverns can be genuinely creepy in places, Rappan Athuk feels more like an amusement park ride where the (black, in this case) skeletons pop out and yell, "Boo!" But even as your characters are dying, you'll enjoy the ride and make a new one to come back in with. Now for the complaints with this particular volume of Rappan Athuk. First off, the maps are amateurishly drawn and too small; a problem corrected in later releases of RA. Second, some of the traps are unworkable. You've got a rising floor trap over doors that open inwards; um, the floor is going to hit the doors and stop. There's another one too involving an illusion that can't actually teleport a character. But overall this is a very inventive product that would be great fun to run.
July 6, 2013
Two words for you: Dung Monster. 'Nuff said.
This is probably my favorite plug and play module to introduce - usually when my players are getting a little too cocky. And I do litter the entry with their former character's bones, just to highlight the dangers of complacency.
Some DM's I've talked with didn't like it, and I can see why some would think it's a little uninviting, but for me it offers everything a good DM could want. This book even has a super, ridiculously overpowered creature in it which your characters probably don't want to encounter if they know what's good for them (but when is that the case?).
The third module's final boss is a central piece of the D&D mythology, so it's nice to be able to have your characters go out on a high note (one way, or the other *evil grin*).
This is probably my favorite plug and play module to introduce - usually when my players are getting a little too cocky. And I do litter the entry with their former character's bones, just to highlight the dangers of complacency.
Some DM's I've talked with didn't like it, and I can see why some would think it's a little uninviting, but for me it offers everything a good DM could want. This book even has a super, ridiculously overpowered creature in it which your characters probably don't want to encounter if they know what's good for them (but when is that the case?).
The third module's final boss is a central piece of the D&D mythology, so it's nice to be able to have your characters go out on a high note (one way, or the other *evil grin*).
Want to read
August 6, 2010Module,Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition,D20
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